MathCastle
Proof WritingChallengePigeonhole and Extremal Arguments

Pigeonhole and Extremal Arguments · Challenge problem

A chess player plays at least one game a day for 7777 days and at most 132132 games in all. The proof that some run of consecutive days has exactly 2121 games looks at the partial sums s1<s2<⋯<s77s_1 < s_2 < \cdots < s_{77} and the numbers s1+21,…,s77+21s_1 + 21, \ldots, s_{77} + 21. These 154154 numbers all lie in {1,2,…,M}\{1, 2, \ldots, M\}. What is MM, the number of boxes?